Dungeon Crawl Classics #1: Idylls of the Rat King
Published by Goodman Games
Written by Jeffrey Quinn
Front Cover by William McAusland
Back Cover by Jason Edwards
Illustrated by Brad McDevitt
Cartography by Matt Snyder
32-page saddlestitched booklet
$10.99

One of the best releases from last year was Goodman Games' $2 dungeon,
Dungeon Crawl Classics
#11: The Dragonfiend Pact, an incredibly wallet-friendly
adventure that gave you an entertaining session or two's worth of old
time dungeon bashing. At the time of its release, the very first in the
series (which has since gone to amass nearly twenty titles) was out
of print, but now a new version, completely updated for use with
Dungeons & Dragons 3.5, has been released.

Although Dungeon Crawl Classics #1: Idylls of the Rat King is
designed for the modern incarnation of the game, its tone and ethos,
along with the rest of the series, is pure Advanced Dungeons &
Dragons: First Edition. Thus, adventures like these take
place underground, NPCs are there for the slaughter, and if it fails to
end with a dragon in the last room, what kind of adventure is it? Of
course, being designed for characters of first to third level,
Idylls of the Rat King naturally foregoes the encounter with
the dragon. The party should comprise between four and six characters,
and include a Rogue, a Good aligned Cleric, and a Fighter, preferably
armed with a silvered weapon (one more clue as to the adventure's
antagonists).

Physically, Idylls of the Rat King is a TSR
scenario writ large. The artwork succinctly captures the awfulness of
the scenarios it is inspired by, and the maps - placed on the inside
front and back covers, no less - are as straight, bland, and dull
as a political party broadcast. Surprisingly, the front cover painting
is really rather good, but the back cover one is anything but. This is
perhaps a sop to modern conventions that demand a cover be eye-catching
in order to sell. All of this is packaged in a 32-page booklet designed to capture the near TSR style that is oh-so-retro and designed to nudge our nostalgia buttons. It seems to be working, as the Dungeon Crawl Classics series is proving to be highly successful.

The set-up for the adventure is simple. For years the village of
Silverton has thrived on the profits earned from its surrounding silver
mines. Recently the silver caravans have been ambushed by goblin
bandits, thought to be lairing in a nearby abandoned mine. This mine
also happens to have the town's very first, opened by the original
prospector. It has a bad reputation after a great evil was unleashed
upon the workers, and in revenge the village's inhabitants killed the
prospector and then cursed and banished his family. As the adventure
opens, the party has tracked the bandits back to the long abandoned
mine.

What you get in the adventure is four levels of a silver mine
populated first by goblins and rats, and then progressing up through
dire rats, skeletons and zombies to lycanthropes (goblin wererats no
less) and evil goblin sorcerers. It is fair to say that this is a very
combat intensive scenario, but with the rewards only coming towards its
end. The Encounter Levels run from one through four for the bulk, with
the tougher opponents being rated at EL five, six, and seven (the latter
only if the players are very silly and ignore all of the warnings).

Aside from the creatures to slaughter, there are plenty of secret doors
to be found and traps to trigger, but not much in the way of
roleplaying. Then again, how much was there back in the day in a TSR
module? Yet Idylls of the Rat King includes several nods to contemporary
sensibilities, not least of which is the severe loss of XP for putting
the goblin females and young to the sword, so no wanton slaughter
(a.k.a. ethnic cleansing) for you, Sir Duction of the Innocent. And the
village (or is it town? The module cannot quite decide) details are
given despite the book proclaiming that there is no need for them. This
includes a map of the town, one that is much more detailed than the four
of the mine levels. But since it was done using ProFantasy Software's
Campaign Cartographer mapping program, you have to wonder why it was not
used to create a more interesting map of the dungeon.

Conclusions
If this module apes any TSR
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: First Edition module, it is certainly one
of the very early, and very American ones. Not that is necessarily a bad
thing, but the modern touches do lend it a somewhat disparate feel. The
problem is that Idylls of the Rat King models itself upon those early
modules and suffers from the same lack of inventiveness. Certainly in
comparison with Dungeon Crawl Classics #11, some
ten modules later, the first entry in the series is of a singular
combative note, requiring less thought from the players. That said, if
you happen to be looking for a straight beat 'em up, Dungeon Crawl
Classics #1: Idylls of the Rat King is perfect.